3primetime3fandomcom-20200214-history
Wikia
From Wikipedia! Wikia (formerly Wikicities) is a free web hosting service for wikis. The site is free of charge,34 deriving its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software, MediaWiki. Its operator, Wikia, Inc., is a for-profit Delaware company founded in late 20045 by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley—respectively Chairman Emeritus and Advisory Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation—and headed by Craig Palmer as CEO.6 On February 8, 2012, founder Angela announced she was leaving Wikia to launch a startup called ChalkDrop.com.7 History Wikia was launched on October 18, 2004, under the name "Wikicities" (which invited comparisons to GeoCities),8 but changed its name to "Wikia" on March 27, 2006.9 In the month before the move, Wikia announced a US$4 million venture capital investment from Bessemer Venture Partners and First Round Capital.10 Nine months later, Amazon.com invested US$10 million in Series B funding.needed By July 2007, it had more than 3,000 wikis in more than 50 languages.11 Over time Wikia has incorporated formerly independent wikis that joined Wikia, such as LyricWiki, The Vault, Uncyclopedia and WoWWiki.12 Gil Penchina described Wikia early on as "the rest of the library and magazine rack" to Wikipedia's encyclopaedia.13 The material has also been described as informal, and often bordering on entertainment, allowing the importing of maps, YouTube videos, and other non-traditional wiki material.14 The wikias were in 188 different languages.4 At the end of November 2012, it was announced that Wikia had raised another US$10.8 million in Series C funding from Institutional Venture Partners and previous investors Bessemer Ventures Partners and Amazon.com.15 Another $15 million was raised in August 2014 for Series D funding, with investors Digital Garage, Amazon, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Institutional Venture Partners. The total raised at this point was $39.8 million.1617 Services and features Wikia communities consist of online encyclopedias, each one specialized in a particular subject or theme. Although Wikia allows almost anything to be the main focus of a wiki, the most common interest of Wikia internauts is in popular fiction franchises of books, films, games and other media, due to the considerable limitation of such detailed information by Wikipedia's notability policies. The main purpose of articles in a Wikia community is to cover information and discussion on a particular topic in a much greater and more comprehensible detail level than what can be found on Wikipedia articles.18 For example, a minor character in a Star Wars film may have its own article on Wookieepedia, whereas the character may not be considered notable enough for a Wikipedia page. Also, the writing style is mostly directed to those yet familiar with specific vocabulary and terminology rather than to the lay and general public of Wikipedia. Other examples of content that is generally considered beyond the scope of information of Wikipedia articles includes Wikia information about video games and related video game topics, detailed instructions, gameplay details, plot details, and so forth. Gameplay concepts can also have their own articles. Wikia also allows wikis to have a point of view, rather than the neutral POV that is required by Wikipedia (although NPOV is a local policy on many Wikia communities).needed Wikia requires all user text content to be published under a free license;19 most use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, although Memory Alpha and Uncyclopedia use a noncommercial variant and some use the GNU Free Documentation License.120 Wikia's Terms of Use forbid hate speech, libel, pornography or copyright infringement. Material is allowed, as long as the added material does not duplicate Wikimedia Foundation projects.21 The Wikia file store as of June 2011 includes over 8 million files stored on SSD.22 As of August 2015, Wikia uses a heavily modified version23 of MediaWiki software, based on the version 1.1924 of MediaWiki, which was officially marked as obsolete in May 2015.25 It has more than 250 extensions installed,24 most of them created by their staff of developers, to add social features like blogs, chat, badges, forums and multimedia,26 but also remove features like advanced user options2728 or skins other than their default custom skin and Monobook (available only for personal use),29 which are often used by advanced users but that new users may find confusing. Questions and sanswers site In January 2009, the company created a question and answer website named "Wikianswers".30 In March 2010, Wikia re-launched "Answers from Wikia", where users could create topic-specialized knowledge market wikis based upon Wikia's own Wikianswers subdomain.31 OpenServing OpenServing was a short-lived Web publishing project owned by Wikia, founded on December 12, 2006,3233 and abandoned, unannounced, in January 2008.34 Like Wikia, OpenServing was to offer free wiki hosting, but it would differ in that each wiki's founder would retain any revenue gained from advertising on the site.323536 OpenServing used a modified version of the Wikimedia Foundation's MediaWiki software created by ArmchairGM, but was intended to branch out to other open source packages.3237 According to Wikia co-founder and chairman Jimmy Wales, the OpenServing site received several thousand applications in January 2007.38 However, after a year, no sites had been launched under the OpenServing banner.34 ArmchairGM ArmchairGM was a sports forum and wiki site created by Aaron Wright, Dan Lewis, Robert Lefkowitz and developer David Pean. Launched in early 2006, the site was initially US-based, but sought to improve its links to sports associated with Britain over its first year. Its MediaWiki-based software included a Digg-style article-voting mechanism, blog-like comment forms with "thumbs up/down" user feedback, and the ability to write multiple types of posts (news, opinions, or "locker room" discussion entries). In late 2006, the site was bought by Wikia for $2 million.39 After the purchase was made, the former owners applied ArmchairGM's architecture to other Wikia sites. An ArmchairGM contributor operating under the pseudonym Manny Stiles auctioned his blogging services on eBay in early 2007. Tampa Bay Devil Rays President Matt Silverman bought the 33-year-old blogger's work for $535, before adding another $1000. The money went to AIDS awareness.40 On March 20, 2008, Sports Illustrated added a section to their website called the SI Vault Wiki, pointing to the ArmchairGM encyclopedia.41 From September 2010 to February 2011, Wikia absorbed the site's encyclopedia articles and blanked all of its old blog entries, effectively discontinuing ArmchairGM in its original form.needed Search engines Wikia, Inc. initially proposed creating a copyleft search engine; the software (but not the site) was named "Wikiasari" by a November 2004 naming contest.2 The proposal became inactive in 2005.needed The "public alpha" of Wikia Search web search engine was launched on January 7, 2008,needed from the USSHC underground data center.42 This roll-out version of the search interface was roundly panned by reviewers in technology media.43 The project was ended in March 2009.44 Late in 2009, a new search engine was established to index and display results from all sites hosted on Wikia.needed Controversy Wikia communities have complained of inappropriate advertisements, or advertising in the body text area.45 There is no easy way for individual communities to switch to conventional paid hosting, as Wikia usually owns the relevant domain names. If a community leaves Wikia for new hosting, the company typically continues to operate the abandoned wiki using its original name and content, adversely affecting the new wiki's search rankings, for advertising revenue.46 The constant skin changes and social features have also been causes of controversy among users.4748 Relationship with Wikipedia Wikia communities have complained of inappropriate advertisements, or advertising in the body text area.45 There is no easy way for individual communities to switch to conventional paid hosting, as Wikia usually owns the relevant domain names. If a community leaves Wikia for new hosting, the company typically continues to operate the abandoned wiki using its original name and content, adversely affecting the new wiki's search rankings, for advertising revenue.46 The constant skin changes and social features have also been causes of controversy among users.4748 Wikia, Inc. Wikia, Inc. is based in San Francisco, California.49 The company was incorporated in Florida in December 2004 and re-incorporated in Delaware as Wikia, Inc. on January 10, 2006.needed In October 2011, Wikia announced that Craig Palmer, the former CEO GEO of Gracenote, would replace Penchina as CEO.6 Wikia has technical staff in the US, but also has an office in Poznań, Poland, in 2006.11 Wikia derives income from advertising. The company initially used Google AdSense,50 but moved on to Federated Media before bringing ad management in-house.51 Alongside Wikia's in-house advertising they continue to use Adsense as well as Amazon Ads and several other third party advertising services. Wikia has several other offices,52 three marketing and sales offices, primary marketing operations originate from New York, and very small offices in Los Angeles and Chicago. International operations are based in Germany, Japanese and Chinese operations are conducted in Tokyo, and there is a "miscellaneous office"needed in London. Wikia has over 200 employees with several contractors and volunteer users.needed The employee base includes many remote employees.